Another Version - Percy Jackson & The Olympians: The Lightning Thief
by The Rider and The Overlander
Summary: Percy Jackson is about to be kicked out of boarding school... again. And that's the least of his troubles. Lately, mythological monsters and the gods of Mount Olympus seem to be walking straight out of the pages of Percy's Greek mythology textbook and into his life. And worse, he's angered a few of them. Zeus' master lightning bolt has been stolen, and Percy is the prime suspect.
1. Chapter 1 - Man Bat Look-Alike

**Hey Guys!**

**As said in the poll, most of you answered 'No', meaning Percy will be a son of another god/goddess. I debated on whether putting up another poll but that means putting another Author's Note, making your hopes high for another chapter on The Shadow Hunter.**

**Anyway, the chapters are changed, even the titles, but the books won't because Rick Riordan still owns it.**

**I'll leave you guys to guess who Percy's godly parent is and please DON'T POST ON WHO YOU THINK HIS GODLY PARENT IS. Don't spoil the story!**

**Anyway, this was 3000+ words with the help of the book. This took about one to three hours because I had to type down every word from the book but making huge changes. Well, not _that_ big but still big.**

**I hope you guys enjoy this chapter and don't forget to review!**

* * *

_**Percy Jackson & the Olympians: The Lightning Thief**_

**CHAPTER 1 – Man Bat Look-Alike**

My name is Percy Jackson.

I'm twelve years old. Until a few months ago, I was a boarding student at Yancy Academy, a private school for troubled kids in upstate New York.

Am I a troubled kid?

Yeah. You could say that.

I could start at any point in my short miserable life to prove it, but things really started going bad last May, when our sixth-grade class took a field trip to Manhattan — twenty-eight mental-case kids and two teachers on a yellow school bus, heading to the Metropolitan Museum of Art to look at ancient Greek and Roman stuff.

I know—it sounds like torture. Most Yancy field trips were.

But Mr. Brunner, our Latin teacher, was leading the trip so I had hopes.

Mr. Brunner was this middle-aged guy in motorized wheelchair. He had thinning hair and a scruffy beard and a frayed tweed jacket, which always smelled like coffee. You wouldn't think he'd be cool, but he told stories and jokes and let us play games in class. He also had this awesome collection of Roman armor and weapons, so he was the only teacher whose class didn't put me to sleep.

I hoped the trip would be okay. At least, I hoped that for once I wouldn't get in trouble.

Boy, was I wrong.

See, bad things happen to me on field trips. Like at my fifth-grade school, when we went to the Saratoga battlefield. I had this accident with a Revolutionary War cannon. I wasn't aiming at the school bus, but of course I got expelled anyway. And before that, at my fourth-grade school, when we took the behind-the-scenes tour of the Marine World shark pool, I sort of hit the wrong lever on the catwalk and our class took an unplanned swim. And the time before that… Well, you get the idea.

This trip, I was determined to be good.

All the way into the city, I put up with Nancy Bobofit, the freckly, redheaded kleptomaniac girl, hitting Grover in the back of the head with chunks of peanut butter-and-ketchup sandwich.

Grover was an easy target. He was scrawny. He cried when he got frustrated. He must've been held back several grades, because he was only sixth grade with acne and the start of a wispy beard on his chin. On top of all of that, he was crippled. He had a not excusing him from PE for an eternity because he had some kind of muscular disease in his legs. He walked funny, like every step pained him, but don't let that fool you. You should've seen him run when it was enchilada day in the cafeteria. Also, he thinks of me as some kind of knight, like I'd help him with his problems anytime, anywhere.

Anyway, Nancy Bobofit was throwing wads of sandwich that stuck into his curly brown hair, and she knew I couldn't do anything back to her because I was already on probation. The headmaster had threatened me with death by in-school suspension if anything bad, embarrassing, or even mildly entertaining happened on this trip.

"Jeez, could you at least try to defend yourself? I'm on probation, if you don't remember." I told Grover.

Grover, instead of answering, dodged another piece of Nancy's lunch.

Mr. Brunner led the museum tour.

He rode up front in his wheelchair, guiding us through the big echoey galleries, past marble statues and glass cases full of really old black-and-orange poetry.

Of course, this stuff had survived for two thousand or so years.

He gathered us around a thirteen-foot-tall stone column with a big sphinx on the top, and started telling us how it was a grave marker, a _stele_, for a girl about our age. He told us about the carvings on the sides. Now _this_ was interesting. I tried to listen to what he was saying, but everybody around me was talking. Sure, I could tell them to shut up but the other teacher chaperone, Mrs. Dodds, was watching me, like those bouncers on the club entrances.

Mrs. Dodds was this little math teacher from Georgia who always wore a black leather jacket, even though she was fifty years old. She looked mean enough to ride a Harley into your locker. She had come to Yancy halfway through the year, when our last math teacher had a nervous breakdown.

From her first day, Mrs. Dodds loved Nancy Bobofit and figured I was devil spawn. She would point her crooked finger at me and say, "Now, honey," real sweet, and I would just roll my eyes. What was she trying to do? Scare me? If she is, then she's doing a really lame job.

Mr. Brunner kept talking about Greek funeral art.

Finally, Nancy Bobofit snickered something about the naked guy on the stele, and I turned around and said, "Would you _kindly_ shut up?"

I was trying to control my temper but I'm pretty sure everybody heard me.

The whole group laughed. Mr. Brunner stopped his story.

"Mr. Jackson," he said, "did you have a comment?"

I shook my head. I said, "No sir, I was only telling Nancy to lower her voice."

Said person glared at me and Mr. Brunner pointed to one of the paintings on the stele. "Perhaps you'll tell us what this picture represents?"

I looked at the carving and rolled my eyes. Easy. "That's Kronos, eating his kids. He did that because he was the Titan king and he didn't trust his kids, who were the gods. But his wife, Rhea, hid Zeus, and gave Kronos a rock to eat instead. And later, when Zeus grew up, he tricked his dad, Kronos, into barfing up his brothers and sisters—"

"Eew!" said one of the girls behind me.

"—and so there was this big fight between the gods and the Titans," I continued, "and the gods won."

Mr. Brunner nodded, satisfied with my answer. Some snickers were heard from the group.

Behind me, Nancy Bobofit mumbled to a friend, "Like our job applications, 'Please explain why Kronos ate his kids'."

"And why, Mr. Jackson," Brunner said, "to paraphrase Miss Bobofit's excellent question, does this matter in real life?"

"Busted." Grover muttered.

"Shut up." Nancy hissed, her face even brighter than her hair.

I thought about Mr. Brunner's question, and guessed. "Because… We may need the information when the time comes…?"

"Close," said Mr. Brunner, "Very close, Mr. Jackson. Anyway, Zeus did indeed feed Kronos a mixture of mustard and wine, which made him disgorge his other five children, who, of course, being immortal gods, had been living and growing up completely undigested in the Titan's stomach. The gods defeated their father, sliced him to pieces with his own scythe, and scattered his remains in Tartarus, the darkest part of the Underworld. On the happy note, it's time for lunch. Mrs. Dodds, would you lead us back outside?"

The class drifted off, the girls holding their stomachs, the guys pushing each other around and acting like doofuses.

Grover and I were about to follow when Mr. Brunner said, "Mr. Jackson."

I told Grover to keep going then turned towards Mr. Brunner. "Yes, sir?"

Mr. Brunner had this look that wouldn't let you go— intense brown eyes that could've been a thousand years old and had seen everything.

"You must learn the exact answer to my question, even though you were very, very close," he told me.

"About… how the… history stuff matter in real life?" I said, remembering his question.

"Yes. What you learn from me," he said, "is vitally important. I expect to treat it as such. I will accept only the best from you, Percy Jackson."

I wanted to get angry; this guy pushed me so hard.

I mean, sure, it was kind of cool on tournament days, when he dressed up in a suit of Roman armor and shouted: "What ho!" and challenged us, sword-point against chalk, to run to the board and name every Greek and Roman person who had ever lived, and their mother, and what god they worshipped. But Mr. Brunner expected me to do as good as everybody else, despite the fact that I have dyslexia and attention deficit disorder and I had never made it above C- in my life. No—he didn't expect me to do _as good_; he expected me to be _better_. And I just couldn't learn all those names and facts, much less spell them correctly.

I mumbled something about trying harder, while Mr. Brunner took one long sad look at the stele, like he'd been at this girl's funeral.

He told me to go outside and eat my lunch.

The class gathered at the front steps if the museum, where we could watch the foot traffic along Fifth Avenue.

Overhead, a huge storm was brewing, with clouds blacker than I'd ever seen over the city. I figured maybe it was global warming or something, because the weather all across New York State had been weirder since Christmas. We'd had massive snow storms, flooding, and wildfires from lightning strikes. I wouldn't be surprised if this was a hurricane blowing in.

Nobody else seemed to notice. Some of the guys were pelting pigeons with Lunchables crackers. Nancy Bobofit was trying to pickpocket something from a lady's purse, and, of course, Mrs. Dodds wasn't seeing a thing.

Grover and I sat on the edge of the fountain, but I sat a bit farther from Grover so I didn't have to "talk" with the guys would pick on him.

"Detention?" Grover asked.

"Nah," I said, "Not from Brunner. I just wish he'd lay off me sometimes. I mean—I'm not a genius."

Grover didn't say anything for a while. Then, when I thought he was going to give me some deep philosophical comment to make me feel better, which won't, he said, "Can I have your apple?"

I didn't have much of an appetite, so I tossed the said fruit to him and he caught it. Barely.

I watched the stream of cabs going down Fifth Avenue, and thought about my mom's apartment, only a little way uptown from where I sat. I hadn't seen her since Christmas. I wanted so bad to jump in a taxi and head home. She'd hug me and be glad to see me, but she'd be disappointed, too. She'd send me right back to Yancy, remind me that I had to try harder, even if this was my sixth school in six years and I was probably going to be kicked out again. I wouldn't be able to stand that sad look she'd give me.

Mr. Brunner parked his wheelchair at the base of the handicapped ramp. He ate celery while he read a paperback novel. A red umbrella stuck up from the back of his chair, making it look like a motorized café table.

I was about to unwrap my sandwich when Nancy appeared right in front of me with her ugly friends—I guess she'd gotten tired from the tourists—and dumped her half-eaten lunch on Grover's lap.

"Oops." She grinned at me with her crooked teeth. Her freckles were orange as if somebody had spray=painted her face with liquid Cheetos.

I rolled my eyes at her, like I always do with lame situations like this. "Ehem, probation?" I said with a raised eyebrow while gesturing to myself.

She huffed, frustrated that she didn't get any violent reaction from me and then clanks could be heard, like bones playing against a bone xylophone with the same tone in every key.

I don't remember touching her, but the next thing I knew, Nancy was sitting on her butt on the ground, screaming, "Percy pushed me!"

Mrs. Dodds materialized next to us.

Some of the kids were whispering: "Did you see—"

"—bony hands—"

"—appeared from the ground—"

I didn't what they were talking about. All I knew was that I was in trouble again.

As soon as Mrs. Dodds was sure _poor little Nancy_ was okay, promising to get her something at the museum gift shop, etc., etc., Mrs. Dodds turned to me. There was a triumphant fire in her eyes, as if I'd done something she'd been waiting for all semester. "Now, honey—"

"Can we just get his over with?" I cut her off. I didn't like those speeches in movies. Like before death situations, "Muwahahaha, you will die by my hand, yada yada, etc., etc.," then the guy who's going to die suddenly kicks or punches the person then tada! They have their weapon pointed against the supposed-to-be killer.

"Come with me," Mrs. Dodds said.

"Wait!" Grover yelped. "It was me. _I_ pushed her."

I stared at him with both of my eyebrows raised. Was he trying to cover up for me after all I had done for him or he was just trying to be brave and heroic? Probably both. Mrs. Dodds scared Grover to dead.

She glared at him so hard his whiskery chin trembled.

"I don't think so, Mr. Underwood," she said.

"But—"

"You—_will_—stay—here."

Grover looked at me desperately.

I shrugged carelessly, "At least you tried." I said.

"Honey," Mrs. Dodds barked at me. "_Now_."

Nancy Bobofit smirked but I just crossed my arms. "I said to get this over with earlier but did you at least guide to where we were going? _Nooooo_."

Mrs. Dodds started dragging me and I yanked my arm away from her. I was about to tell her to not touch me but when I looked at where she was, she was at the museum entrance, way at the top of the steps, gesturing impatiently at me to come on.

"Impatient much?" I muttered as went after Mrs. Dodds. I have moments like that a lot, when my brain temporarily shuts down or something, and the next thing I knew I've missed something, as if a puzzle piece fell out of the universe and left me staring at the blank piece behind it. The school counselor told me this was part of the ADHD, my brain misinterpreting things.

But I didn't believe it.

Halfway up the steps, I glanced back at Grover. He was looking pale, cutting his eyes between me and Mr. Brunner, like he wanted Mr. Brunner to notice what was going on. "What is he doing? Can't he see Mr. Brunner's reading a book?" I asked nobody.

I looked back up, Mrs. Dodds had disappeared again.

She was not inside the building, at the end of the entrance hall.

_Okay_, I thought. _She's going to make me buy a new shirt for poor Nancy at the gift shop._

But apparently, that wasn't the plan.

I followed her deeper into the museum. When I finally caught up to her, we were back in the Greek and Roman section.

Except for us, the gallery was empty.

Mrs. Dodds stood with her arms crossed in front of a big marble frieze of the Greek gods. She was making this weird noise in her throat, like growling.

Even with the noise, this was another pretty lame situation. If she was expecting me to be scared or be nervous, she was _way_ wrong.

Something about the way she looked at the frieze, as if she wanted to pulverize it, was weird.

"You'd been giving us problems, honey," she said.

Being me, I said, "Everyone has problems you know."

She tugged on the cuffs of her leather jacket. "Did you really think you would get away from it?"

The look on her eyes was beyond mad. It was evil.

I said, "No, _duh_. I'm already here, getting scolded by my Pre-algebra teacher."

Thunder shook the building, but I could've sworn I heard a deep laugh, like it was entertained.

"You are much like your father but," Mrs. Dodds said. "We are not fools, Percy Jackson. It was only a matter of time before we found you out. Confess and—"

I didn't what she was talking about but I cut her off, "Uh, I don't know my father and _of course_ you're not fools, you're _teachers_! Especially you teaching math, you'll be able to solve word problems quickly. So… does that count as a confession?" I said.

Okay, I can think of two things that might be related to what she was saying right now: Maybe the teachers found out about the illegal stash of candy I'd been selling out my dorm room. _Or _maybe they'd realized I got my essay on _Tom Sawyer_ from the internet without even reading the book and now they were going to take away my grade.

"Not really," Mrs. Dodds cackled, "But you're time is up."

Then the weirdest thing happened. Her eyes began to glow like barbeque coals. Her fingers stretched, turning into talons. Her jacket melted into large, leathery wings. She wasn't human. She was a shriveled hag with bat wings and claws and a mouth full of yellow fangs, and she was about to slice me into ribbons.

"Who are you, Man Bat?" I asked her. If you don't know who Man Bat is, he's like the opposite of Batman and looks like Mrs. Dodds right now. Except he was a guy and he was wearing ripped blue pants. I don't know if he ever changes that, but oh well.

Then things got even stranger.

Mr. Brunner, who'd been out in front of the museum a minute before, wheeled his chair into the doorway of the gallery with a pen in his hand.

"What ho, Percy!" he shouted, and tossed the pen through the air.

Mrs. Dodds lunged at me.

With a bored look, I jumped on my Pre-algebra teacher's back and caught the pen. I held on the Man Bat look-alike's neck and when I was about to throw the pen back to Mr. Brunner, Mrs. Dodds tried to throw me off her back.

I held on to her neck tighter and the pen fell to the ground. "It was useless anyway." I mumbled as I grabbed onto my teacher's shoulders and tried to pilot her, like an airplane.

It wasn't scary at all. Heights didn't bother me and this was probably some reenactment of a scene of a movie. I looked at my surroundings, trying to find a way to land and then I felt a talon swipe at my arm. I looked at the wound and saw blood oozing out of three claw marks.

"I'm going to the clinic after this." I said through gritted teeth and piloted my teacher, trying to land on the floor but she took a sudden turn and was now heading towards the huge window. "Well it was nice meeting you." I said as I swung my leg to the other side of my teacher's back and jumped down. Luckily, it wasn't too high and I managed to land on my feet.

Unfortunately, Mrs. Dodds crashed through the glass and a screech could be heard but it was getting quieter, and quieter, and quieter, until the sound couldn't be heard anymore.

I looked at my bleeding arm and sighed. It was painful but I wasn't a weeny. I picked up the pen and was about to call out to Mr. Brunner but he wasn't there. I looked around and saw the glass wasn't broken; the window wasn't damaged at all. Nobody was there but me.

Had I imagined the whole thing? Yeah right.

I went back outside.

It had started to rain.

Grover was sitting by the fountain, a museum map tented over his head. Nancy Bobofit was now standing, rather than on the ground. When she saw me, she said, "I hoped Mrs. Kerr whipped your butt."

I said, "Who?"

"Our _teacher_. Duh!"

I blinked. We had no teacher named Mrs. Kerr. I asked Nancy what she was talking about.

She just rolled her eyes and turned away. "Hey, _I'm_ supposed to do that, not you." I said.

I asked Grover where Mrs. Dodds was.

He said, "Who?"

But he paused first, and he wouldn't look at me, so I thought he was messing with me. And he didn't notice my arm.

"Not funny, Grover," I told him. "This is serious."

Thunder boomed overhead.

I saw Mr. Brunner sitting under his red umbrella, reading his book, as if he never moved.

I went over to him.

He looked up at, a little distracted, "Ah, that would be my pen. Please bring your own utensil in the future, Mr. Jackson and— What happened to your arm?!" he said.

I handed him his pen and looked at my arm. "Oh this? Some stuff fell and scratched me." I said. Wait a minute, that's not what happened… Did it? A sudden flashback appeared and I saw myself walking towards Mrs. Dodds when a bunch of stuff fell over me. Oh. It did. But I could've sworn… "Sir, where's Mrs. Dodds?" I asked Mr. Brunner.

He frowned and sat forward, looking mildly concerned. "Percy, there is no Mrs. Dodds on this trip. As far as I know, there has never been a Mrs. Dodds at Yancy Academy. Also, we may need to go to a clinic. Are you feeling alright?"


	2. Chapter 2 - Fruits or Fortune-telling?

**What's up, people?!**

**I know it's nearly the same but with Percy being a son of another god/goddess makes it different! Heck, the ENTIRE Heroes of Olympus series is different! If I'm not lazy, I would make another version of that too.**

**Anyway, next chapter, I'm going to ask a question and I need your answers.**

**Also, the more chapters I write, the more unrelated it gets, so please be patient. In this chapter, the end is what I edited most but you can also see that the beginning and the middle as well. And of course, the chapter title.**

**Please DO NOT POST ON WHO YOU THINK PERCY'S GODLY PARENT IS.**

**I hope you guys enjoy this chapter and don't forget to review!**

* * *

_**Percy Jackson & the Olympians: The Lightning Thief**_

**CHAPTER 2 – Fruits or Fortune-telling?**

So yeah, we went to the clinic, the nurse wrapped a white thing on my arm and yada, yada.

For the rest of the school year, the entire campus seemed to be playing some kind of trick on me. The students acted as if they were completely and totally convinced that Mrs. Kerr—a perky blond woman whom I had never seen in my life until she got on our bus at the end of the field trip—had been our pre-algebra teacher since Christmas.

Every so often I would spring a Mrs. Dodds reference on somebody, just to see if I could trip them up, but they would stare at me like I was a psycho. But I'm _not_ a psycho. I've got to say, they're doing a pretty good job in pretending.

Grover didn't fool me. When I mentioned the name Dodds to him, he would hesitate, and then claim she didn't exist. I knew he was lying. Something _had_ happened at the museum.

I didn't have much time to think about it during the days, but at night, visions of Mrs. Dodds with talons and leathery wings would wake me up.

The freak weather continued, which didn't help my mood. One night, a thunderstorm blew out the windows in my dorms room. A few days later, the biggest tornado ever spotted in Hudson Valley touched down only fifty miles from Yancy Academy. One of the current events we studied in social studies class was the unusual number of small planes that had gone down in sudden squalls in the Atlantic that year.

My grades slipped from Ds to Fs. I got into less fights with Nancy Bobofit and her friends because they didn't get any violent reactions from me. Grover, however, was now their target, rather than me. I don't try to help him, I just watch. But once he was finished being picked on, they would pretend to have an accident and blame it on me, resulting with me being sent out into the hallway.

When our English teacher, Mr. Nicoll, asked me for the millionth time why I was too lazy to study for spelling tests, I smashed my fist on my table, it didn't break, and I went on a short rant about me having dyslexia and ADHD, not lazy. "Since you're an English teacher, you would know what the _meanings_ of those _words_, right?" The class went, 'ooh', and the teacher excused himself from the room.

Apparently, Mr. Nicoll the last part as an insult and the headmaster sent my mom a letter the following week, making it official: I would not be invited back next year to Yancy Academy.

_Fine_, I told myself. _Just fine._

I was homesick.

I wanted to be with my mom in our little apartment on the Upper East Side, even if I had to go to a public school and put up with my obnoxious stepfather and his stupid poker parties.

And yet… there were things I'll miss at Yancy: The view of the woods out my dorm window, the Hudson River in the distance, and the smell of pine trees.

Grover? Nah. He was the reason why I wouldn't be invited back next year. Why couldn't he defend himself? Was he waiting for me to save him? Pfft… fat chance.

I'll miss Latin class, too—Mr. Brunner's crazy tournament days and his faith that I could do well, even if he said those things at the field trip.

As exam week got closer, Latin was the only test I studied for. I hadn't forgotten what Mr. Brunner had told me about this subject being a life-and-death situation.

The evening before the final, I got so frustrated; I threw the _Cambridge Guide to Greek Mythology_ across my dorm room. Words had started flying off the page, circling my head, the letters doing back-flips as if they were some sort of dare devils. There was no way I was going to remember the difference between Chiron and Charon, and those other stuff.

I stared out the window, "Stupid dyslexia…" I muttered.

I remembered Mr. Brunner's serious expression, his thousand-year-old eyes. _I will only accept the best from you, Percy Jackson_.

Screw only accepting the best from me. I picked up the book.

I'd never asked a teacher for help before but hey, what's the problem with doing that right now?

I walked downstairs to the faculty offices. Most of them were dark and empty, and somehow, I felt like I was at home. Mr. Brunner's door was ajar, light from his window stretching across the hallway floor. I was three steps from the door handle when I heard voices inside the office. Mr. Brunner asked a question. A voice that was definitely Grover's said, "…worried about Percy, sir."

I froze and glared at the air, as if he was there.

I don't usually eavesdrop, but this was Grover saying he was _worried_ about me. So he's trying to get Mr. Brunner to help him, eh? I inched closer.

"… alone this summer," Grover was saying. "I mean, a Kindly One in the _school_! Now that we know for and _they_ know too—"

"We would only make matters worse by rushing him," Mr. Brunner said. "We need the boy to mature more."

Pfft, mature. Yeah, right.

"But he may not have time. The summer solstice deadline—"

"Will have to be resolved without him, Grover. Let him enjoy his ignorance while he still can."

So now he's saying I'm stupid. What is wrong with him?

"Sir, he _saw_ her…"

"His imagination," Mr. Brunner insisted. "The Mist over the students and staff will be enough to convince him of that."

Mist? The heck is he talking about? And maybe Grover was talking about me seeing Mrs. Dodds, and the students and staff… Ah hah! Ithey _were_ playing a trick on me.

"Sir, I… I can't fail my duties again." Grover's voice was choked with emotion. "You know what that would mean."

"You haven't failed, Grover," Mr. Brunner said kindly. "I should have seen her for what she was. Now let's just worry about keeping Percy alive until next fall—"

The mythology book slipped from my hand and landed on the floor with a thud. Mr. Brunner went silent.

I picked up the book and was about to back down the hall when I was lightly pushed to the wall and… shadows? Enveloped me. I could still see, though. What was happening?

A few seconds later, I heard a slow _clop-clop-clop_, like muffled wood blocks, then a sound like and animal snuffling. My eyes widened when Mr. Brunner trotted outside. Yes, trotted. From his waist down, was a HORSE'S BODY. What is happening here?! Am I going insane?

He looked around and I was surprised he couldn't see me when I was right next to him. He went back inside the room.

"Nothing," he murmured. "My nerves haven't been right since the winter solstice."

"Mine neither," Grover said. "But I could have sworn…"

"Go back to the dorm," Mr. Brunner told him. "You have a long day of exams tomorrow."

"Don't remind me."

The lights went out in Mr. Brunner's office then I waited by the wall for what seems to be an eternity.

Finally, I took a step forward and the shadows that were enveloping me unwrapped from my body and back to the wall, like an octopus' tentacles. Weird. I must be hallucinating.

I made my way back up to the dorm.

Grover was lying on his bed, studying his Latin exam notes like he had been there all night.

"Hey," he said, bleary-eyed. "You going to be ready for this test?"

I didn't answer.

"You look awful." He frowned. "Is everything okay?"

"Just dandy!" I replied with fake okay-ness.

I turned so I wouldn't glare at him, and started getting ready for bed.

I finally found out about the trick the campus had been playing on me but the weirdest thing I saw was Mr. Brunner… He was like, half horse.

The one thing I was sure of? Grover and Mr. Brunner were talking about me behind my back. They thought I was in some kind of danger. The worst part? They were going to keep me alive until next fall. They were probably going to kill me. But I won't let that happen.

The next afternoon, as I was leaving the three-hour Latin exam, my eyes swimming with all the Greek and Roman names I'd misspelled, Mr. Brunner, called me back inside.

For a moment, I thought he'd found out about my eavesdropping the night before, but that didn't seem to be the problem.

"Percy," he said. "Don't be discouraged about leaving Yancy. It's… it's for the best."

His tone was kind but I couldn't help but glare at him slightly.

Even though he was speaking quietly, the other kids finishing the test could hear. Nancy Bobofit smirked at me and made sarcastic little kissing motions with her lips.

I mumbled, "Okay, sir."

"I mean…" Mr. Brunner wheeled his chair back and forth, like he wasn't sure what to say. "This isn't the right place for you. It was only a matter of time."

I glared at him a little harder.

Here was my favorite teacher, in front of the class, telling me I couldn't handle it. After saying he believed in me all year, now he was telling me I was destined to get kicked out.

"Right," I said, shoving my hands into my pants' pockets.

"No, no," Mr. Brunner said. "Oh, confound it all. What I was trying to say… you're not normal, Percy. That's nothing to be—"

"Thanks!" I blurted. "Thanks for reminding me! I'm destined to get kicked out of Yancy, which isn't the right place for me, and I'm _ab_normal!"

"Percy—"

But I was already gone.

On the last day of the term, I shoved my clothes into my suitcase.

The other guys were joking around, talking about their vacation plans. One of them was going on a hiking trip to Switzerland. Another was cruising the Caribbean for a month. They were juvenile delinquents, like me, but they were _rich_ juvenile delinquents. Their daddies were executives, or ambassadors, or celebrities. I was a nobody, from a family of nobodies.

They asked me what I'd be doing this summer and I had told them I was going to ride monster trucks.

Of course, I was lying since if I told them I was going to go back to the city, that would be boring.

"Whoa," one of the guys said. "That's cool!"

They went back to their conversation as if I never existed. Talkoffs.

The last person I wanted to say goodbye to would be Grover, but as it turned out, he'd booked a ticket to Manhattan on the same Greyhound as I had, so there I was, with him, as his _body guard_, heading into the city.

During the whole bus ride, Grover kept glancing nervously down the aisle, watching the other passengers. It was annoying.

I said, "So, Grover, lookin' for Kindly Ones?"

Grover nearly jumped out his seat. "Wha—what do you mean?"

I crossed my arms. ""I _saw_ her."" I said, quoting what he said.

Grover's eye twitched. "Percy, how much did you hear?"

"Nothing." I said simply. "The Mrs. Dodds-does-not-exist trick didn't work on me. I didn't believe a word they said. Plus, you're a really, really bad liar."

His ears turned pink.

He fished out a grubby business card from his shirt pocket. "Just take this okay? In case you need me this summer."

I rolled my eyes. "Ha, ha, ha. I can be my _own_ body guard, no thank you very much." I said.

Grover showed the card to me anyway.

_**Grover Underwood**_

_Keeper_

_Half-Blood Hill_

_Long Island, New York_

(800) 009-0009

The card was in fancy script so I had to blink every so often since it felt like my eyes were bleeding. "I ain't taking that." I said as I pushed his hand away.

"But—"

"I—_ain't_—taking—that." I mimicked Mrs. Dodds at the field trip, except my glare was even scarier than hers because my eyes were shadowy black, like you're staring into a very, very, deep hole.

Grover trembled. "Look, the truth is, I—I kind of have to protect you."

I chuckled, amused. "Y-_you_ have to protect _me?_ That's the funniest thing I have heard ever since my mom received a letter that I won't be invited next year!" I said. "I'm pretty sure I can protect myself from more Man Bats or evil versions of Bat Man."

Before he could respond, there was a huge grinding noise under our feet. Black smoke poured from the dashboard and the whole bus filled with a smell like rotten eggs. The driver cursed and limped the Greyhound over to the side of the highway.

After a few minutes clanking around in the engine compartment, the driver announced that we'd all have to get off. Grover and I filed outside with everybody else.

We were on a stretch of country road—no place would you notice if you didn't break down there. On our side of the highway, there was nothing but maple trees and litter from passing cars. On the other side, across four lanes of asphalt shimmering with afternoon was an old-fashioned fruit stand.

"Why the heck would someone put up a fruit stand in the middle of nowhere?" I pointed out, when they were at the stretch of the country road along with everybody else. Grover's eyes widened as he spotted where I was gesturing at. The stuff on sale looked pretty good—heaping boxes of blood-red cherries and apples, walnuts and apricots, and jugs of cider in a claw-foot tub of ice. There were no customers, though, just three old ladies sitting on rocking chairs in the shade of a maple tree, knitting the biggest pair of socks I had _ever_ seen. The woman on the right knitted one of them. The woman on the left knitted the other. The woman on the middle held an enormous basket of electric-blue yarn. All three women looked ancient, with pale faces wrinkled like fruit leather, silver hair tied back in a white bandana, bony arms sticking out of bleached cotton dresses. The weirdest thing was they seemed to be looking right at me.

"Huh. Now I'm hungry." I glanced back at Grover, who stood frozen staring at the three old women, and then began to make my way over to the stand. Grover snapped out of it when I was three feet away, and raced after me with a panicked expression. "Percy, _no!_"

I stopped and looked at him. "Percy, we have to leave! Let's get back on the bus! Now!" he said.

"Heck no!" I said. "You serious? It's not fixed yet, the driver said to get off it, and it smelled like rotten eggs. Besides, what are you so scared of, wimp? They're just three old ladies selling _really_ good looking food. Hey," I spoke to the lady with the yarn, "What's the cost?"

The woman raised an eyebrow at me, as if wondering who I was. I thought, perhaps, that it was because they didn't get many customers despite the good-looking food—I felt weird walking up to them, like my body wanted to get away, but my stomach wanted food. I listened to my stomach. Though, it felt like the ladies knew him… It was creepy.

"Fifty cents a fruit," she spoke in a raspy voice, like she never drank water her entire life. "Though, you can get a handful of berries for the same, and the cider, we also offer fortune-telling…" She eyes me. I was paying attention, though. Grover looked like he was about to pass out. I waved a hand dismissively. "Nah, I'm good. It's up to Fate to lead my life. Those people who say it depends on what you do are idiots, honestly." I said. I held up an apricot, an apple, a plum, and peach in one hand, and two bags—one of cherries, and a smaller one of walnuts—in the other. "And I'll take three cups of that cider, yeah?"

The three women stopped knitting sometime when he was talking, and were now staring at me. The middle one smiled. "Yes, Fate leads. That will be $5.50. Pleasure to do business. We do not get many customers, Percy Jackson."

I stared at them for a second, surprised, before deciding it was an old lady thing. Still, how had they known my name? "I don't see why," I mused, "This fruit stand looks awesome, yeah."

The lady knitting the left sock nodded, humming as she filled bottles with cider, while the lady on the right scooped some ice. "Yes. This fruit gives you power. We are interested that you are the only one that welcomes it like this. You change fate—this fate," the lady in the middle hefted up the largest pair of scissors that I had laid my eyes on, and snipped a strand of a thread, as I watched, "you can change."

"Yeah, sure thing!" I waved as I pushed my purchased items into Grover's trembling hands, and reached for the bottles of cider, exchanging money with the lady in the middle. These ladies weirded me out a bit, but I liked the conversation we had. They weren't too bad, like _some_ old people he met. The lady holding him a basket handed me their card, and I dragged Grover away, waving cheerfully.

When they reached the other side of the road again, I snapped my eyes at Grover, who was white as paper and shaking. "What, you got grandma-phobia or something?" I asked. "Chillax, Grover, I got _food_, see? You _like_ food!"

"No, Percy, y-you don't understan—"

At the rear of the bus, the driver wrenched a big chunk of smoking metal out of the engine compartment.

The bus shuddered, and the engine roared back to life. The passengers cheered and I sighed. "Finally."

"Darn right!" yelled the driver in response, and the passengers laughed. The man slapped the bus with his hat, "Everybody back on board!"


End file.
